


a denomination of the sublime

by theycallmemonchaton



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Bulimia, Character Study, F/F, andrew minyard makes a brief appearance, implied physical and sexual abuse, its more my own interpretation of how their pasts went before they joined the foxes, renison, so do a few of the other foxes but andrew's part is a little more relevant, switching POV, talk about eating disorder, the evolution of a home, this doesn't exactly follow the post-canon content released by nora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 23:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17651657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theycallmemonchaton/pseuds/theycallmemonchaton
Summary: throughout their lives, allison and renee have known multiple homes. some better than others. but somehow, all these homes somehow led them a single standard point, a convergence, that resulted in a cosmic concoction for perfection, a denomination of the sublime.





	1. Allison

a playlist for this [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/46bh21i6o5k8toxt7qhyb4esa/playlist/4SDOystxrkIdBPlAO2SrC9?si=vj2N4XB7S4iENEQ8iS8s_w)

If you had asked six-year-old Allison Reynolds what first came to mind when she thought of home, she would’ve thought of their house right on the strand in Manhattan Beach, California. She would’ve thought of their neighbor with the dog and the sun warmed sand between her toes as she gazed out at the water, the sun bowing low enough to brush a breath of a kiss to the brow of the horizon, turning the sky a vibrant prism of colors. She would’ve thought of the seeming quiet of that house. It was less ostentatious compared to their mansions and estates back East and despite Los Angeles being the celebrity capitol, the paparazzi never seemed to find them as quickly in the Manhattan House.

Of course, her six-year-old brain would’ve factored out her mother’s vacant stare as she swallowed another mouthful of pills and her father’s dismissing wave whenever Allison tried to point out a funny looking bird. No, when asked what home was, little Allison Reynolds would’ve only thought of the golden beaches and beautiful house, and the neighbor with a dog she could pretend was her own, and two parents together at the same time, which was more than she could expect at any of their other homes.

 

At eleven, Allison was a little more reasonable. Home was away, away, away. Home was away from the cameras and the magazines and the critics and the adults who were saying too much about an eleven-year-old girl’s body. She was too old to be a child and too young for the things they were saying about her to be comfortable (not that they’ll ever be) and she felt like she was being pulled in two. She had to look a certain way, but dress in a different way. Her mother’s personal stylist was telling her how to accentuate her “natural assets” when there was nothing to accentuate. Zero times zero is still zero. Push up bra times flat chest leaves awkward lumps and “wardrobe malfunctions,” a phrase Allison began to fear quite quickly.  


She was scared. Constantly. She couldn’t be a normal child. She went out with friends? Suddenly their lives were being aired out for the public. Misspoke and someone overheard? Recipe for disaster, “soundbites were the devil’s work”, her father’s PR manager used to say. But the worst part was the commentary on her body. She was eleven, going through growth spurts and changes. Rapid weight gain and loss because her body was just trying to grow. But the media didn’t see it that way. Dressed in sweats and eating ice cream with her nanny? She was a “young child celebrity already letting herself go.” An odd angle shot because she was literally getting up out of a car? Suddenly headlines read “The Reynolds’ Legacy: Rolls of Dough and Rolls of… Something Else.”  


Eleven-year-old Allison was beginning to hate herself and only wanted to get away. So, if asked what home meant, it was somewhere distant from her parents. Her favorite was with her cousin Ronan and her family, estranged from Mrs. Reynolds after her rapid rise to fame. They lived on a farm in Iowa. What celebrity is ever found on a farm in Iowa? Exactly. So quickly that became Allison’s favorite home. Ronan was five years older but acted closer than a sister. Whenever she found Allison curled under the table, eyes staring wide at a horrible cover of some magazine with her photo pasted on and a horrible caption, she would gently coax Allison out with the offer to help feed the cows and visit the sheep. She would brush Allison’s hair and tell her that all the reporters were desperate shitwipes who drink of out the cesspools of humanity. Allison liked Ronan.

 

At sixteen, Allison was a completely different person. Gone was the idealistic six-year-old, and gone was the scared eleven-year-old. Sixteen-year-old Allison was stronger (or so she liked to think). She was angrier now. She was angry at her parents for never standing up for her and angry at herself for not being perfect. In a small part of her brain that she chose to ignore, she was angry at herself for not being worthy of her parents’ support. After years of being broken down, she began to fight back. But unfortunately, the way she coped was wrought from awful advice and a lack of strong parental figures. She was sixteen and bulimic. In her own mind, she was going to show them she could fit their standards. After years of being deemed unworthy, she was going to show them she wasn’t.

And it worked. She was sixteen and a fashion icon. Clothes and shoes and handbags rained down on her. It wasn’t as if she wanted for them. Her trust fund assured that she would never want for anything, but it was the principle. She was worthy. On the outside, she was polished and fresh. Never the same outfit, hair perfect, teeth straight, smile with a net worth the same as her father’s. On the inside, she was angry and empty and hot. She began acting out. Fighting with her parents, going out, refusing to attend certain events. Allison was building up walls faster than her father bought resorts.

At sixteen, home was at a party with the best friends she had ever had that she met five minutes ago. Home was slipping the bouncer a Benjamin and a wink and waltzing into the club without anyone raising a finger to stop her. Home was screaming along to the music in the club and dancing for so long that she forgot she had a body to go with her angry brain.

 

At seventeen and a half, things changed. After trying so hard to be perfect, everything came tumbling, crashing down around her. Her parents had been sick of her behavior. She was going to attend the grand opening of the new resort so matter what she said or did. Allison didn’t feel well. She remarked it to her parents briefly and was promptly ignored. So, she slipped into her persona. Princess Allison Reynolds, fashion icon, part-time rebellious teen, worthy of adoration and fame.

She hadn’t a full meal in two days. There was a lunch party before the opening. Allison ate what was expected of her and then forced it up in the bathroom not even an hour later. She wasn’t seeing straight while standing on the stage as her father gave some bullshit speech. Her vision began to vignette as he reached for the classic gold scissors to cut the red ribbon. She doesn’t remember the rest.

She found out later, watching the TV in her private hospital room that “heiress Allison Reynolds collapsed and was air lifted to a nearby hospital as her father was cutting the ribbon on their new resort. Inside sources say the nature of her illness points to a long history of bulimia. There has been no comment from the family.”

Allison Reynolds was seventeen and a half and everything she had worked for was ripped away. She lost the brand deals and the fashion icon status. She lost the image of the perfect daughter. She was a disappointment to her parents and the whole time she was in the hospital she was reminded of that.

Allison was seventeen and a half and home became a boarding school in southern California.

At eighteen, things changed again. This time for the best they ever had. The boarding school in California had a fantastic therapy program. Allison went to private meetings and then evolved to group, and finally learned how to communicate how she felt. She rode horses and learned to paint and began to accept herself. After only six months of being out of the public eye, Allison was beginning to feel like a real person, not the façade of a daughter her parents and the media wanted.

By eighteen, Allison had also found exy. It was perfect. Loud and violent and brash, it let her release any pent-up anger she felt. She threw herself into the sport. It had only been a few months but she knew she wanted to pursue it. At the beginning, she felt scared again. She loved exy, but she didn’t like what it did to her body. She was gaining muscle and growing larger in places she didn’t want to. She was beginning to lose the perfect body shape she had worked so hard to achieve. But instead of trying to fight it by herself, she talked to her therapist and together, they worked things out.

Allison was eighteen and was finally on the path to loving herself. She wasn’t there yet, but she was on the path.

At eighteen, Allison’s home had become the court. She fought and snarled and let trash spew from her mouth as she played and let herself feel everything she didn’t feel like dealing with at any other time. She made friends, real friends with her teammates. She found people who supported her and accepted her and didn’t make her feel unworthy and angry. She was at home with the running and the fighting and the muscle building and the feel of the racquet in her hand. This was where she was meant to be all along.

 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay at the boarding school forever. She graduated and was thrust back out into the real world, her therapist’s card slipped into her pocket. The media was in a frenzy at her “release.” Everyone wanted the interview. They wanted to hear her say how horrible it was and how glad she was to be back. They wanted her to explain her eating disorder and say how it wasn’t a big deal. Or, contrarily, they wanted her to become a martyr. They wanted her to stand up and become the face of this disease. They wanted her to allow herself to be a victim.

But Allison was nineteen now and she refused to let herself become that again. She didn’t go home to her parents after graduation. She went straight to her six-year-old home, the Manhattan House. She began to apply to college, a move no one expected her to make. She was applying as a student athlete, exy, division one, she wouldn’t take any other school.

Allison was nineteen and the only accepted offer she got was from David Wymack, coach of the shittiest division one exy team in the nation. Possibly the world. He flew himself out to meet her. Allison was driven and ambitious and knew exactly what she wanted. She wasn’t as in love with life as she was in school. A few months back with the media had rebuilt some of her walls again, but she had a goal now, and nothing was going to stop her from achieving it. The interview was almost vicious. No fault to Wymack. She was letting him know what he was getting into from the get go. But that didn’t seem to deter him. He told her she could move up whenever it suited her and she’d be situated in Fox Tower where she’d meet her two new roommates, the only other two girls on the team.

Her parents, to put it lightly, were displeased. They hadn’t expected her to go to college. Much less because of a sport and much much less because it wasn’t even Ivy League. “Famous people always get into Ivy Leagues,” her father told her. “No matter how smart they actually are, the only thing that matters is the money.”

They tried to convince her not to go. They threatened to take away her trust fund. She said let them. They tried contacting the school. Wymack intervened and said Allison was a legal adult, capable of making her own decisions. They tried to sue him, but a case wouldn’t stick. It was never even made official. Allison half expected him to cut her. She waited, terrified that he would rescind his offer. But that letter never came. She was still expected at Fox Tower in the fall.

So, come fall, she went.

Allison was nineteen and home became a cramped college dorm soon to be filled with people she would love and cherish for the rest of her life. She found a new family. Way more turbulent than the friends she made at boarding school, she was allowed to be herself. Catty bitch, princess, Allison. She had found her place.

 

 

 

come find me on [tumblr ](https://allisonireynolds.tumblr.com/) <3


	2. Renee

When she was seven, home for Natalie was sitting in her cracked plaster tub, hands over her ears as she tried to block out her parents’ fight. They fought a lot, her parents. Usually yelling, but occasionally she would hear the hard slam of a body colliding with the wall and she knew, even at the tender age of seven, to remove herself from that house as room as

She found herself taking solace in the protection from the older kids down the street. It wasn’t their protection, per say, but their penchant for allowing her to hang around them and not ask too many questions when she would show up with

Their dusty North Dakota neighborhood wasn’t a nice one. At night, Natalie could hear the trains slamming by. She grew up waking to the sight of paramedics and police cars, always a tossup between train jumper and gang related

At ten, the kids on the block had evolved to the local gang. Natalie had seen the TV shows, heard the school presentations, she knew gangs were bad. But it was safer to be in a gang than the victim of one. She wasn’t an official member. She was too young and clumsy. But they let her hang around, just like the older kids on the block once

Natalie was ten when home became the dusty lot of the warehouse where the gang set up, waiting around with the other gang member wannabes. They watched, listened, absorbed. They sometimes ran errands for official members, anything that might get them inducted quicker. The quicker they were an official member, the safer they were at

Natalie was inducted at thirteen. It was a horrible trial she had to pass but at the time it was worth it. It was better to have it happen to you when you expected it than late at night with someone breaking into your house and taking

For years it went on. The current gang leader was a sadistic man with a penchant for young girls and knives. Especially if the two went together. She rose up. Earning his trust, doing his bidding, until she was his favorite. He owned her. And he wanted her to know that with every fiber of her being. She did what he wanted. She slept with him, killed for him, let him use her, let his friends use her. Anything for him. Little Natalie sitting alone, scared in the tub was dead. Killed by the devil she had sold her soul

Natalie was fifteen and her home became beside the man she loved. The man she despised. The man she couldn’t

At sixteen, her savior emerged, busting through the doors of the warehouse, scooping her up off the broken, bloodies heap, she lay in on the floor. He had just finished with her when they

The police flooded the building, arresting everyone in sight. Natalie was arrested as well, separated from the man she called monster. It was the separation she needed to free herself from his clutches. While in juvie she freed herself. She was sixteen and home became the solitary cell in the North Dakota State Juvenile Detention

During her six months stay, she fought whenever she wasn’t alone. Never again would she let someone take from her. She sought revenge. She was angry, she was violated, she was changed. Broken and scared Natalie was dead a buried in the same plot as Little Natalie in the bathtub. This Natalie was a fighter. Feral and

Her angel appeared to her on the day she was released from Juvie. Her social worker introduced her to Stephanie Walker, a woman who had taken a special interest in her while she was incarcerated. Natalie was suspicious. Of course she was. What woman heard of a juvenile delinquent suspected of murder and decided to bring her into her home. But Stephanie wouldn’t listen. She welcomed Natalie in. Allowed her to feel angry. She enrolled her at a new school and signed her up for the exy team. She paid for Natalie’s therapy and gave her a new name.

Stephanie Walker helped bury Natalie and sewed the seeds for Renee to

Most importantly, however, she gave Renee a way to save herself. She began bringing Renee to church with her. Finding religion allowed Renee to find forgiveness. Forgiveness for her actions and the actions of the people who hurt her. She felt no regret, but she allowed herself to move on. She allowed herself to become new. Stephanie may have sown the seeds, but Renee is what made Renee

Renee was seventeen years old and for the first time in her life, home was a real home. Home with a mother and a school and an exy team. Home with a white picket fence and a church up the street. Renee still carried her knives, but now they were her knives, not his, and she knew that someday, she wouldn’t need them anymore. She knew she would grow. She would change. She would rise and keep rising, and she would become whole

Stephanie called her old friend David Wymack, coach for the only exy team that would give Renee a chance. He came to see her play and got a twofer. Renee’s rival, Dan Wilds, later one of her best friends, and Renee, herself, both got signed in the same game. Together they joined the Palmetto State Foxes and Renee’s life changed

She was nineteen and home was still Stephanie Walker’s house with the white picket fence and the church down the street, but home had also grown to include her dorm in Fox Tower and the court she practiced at every

She made friends. More than that, she made a family. Dan became like a sister, Matt a younger brother. She met Allison and Seth and the older generation Foxes. She had a group she could call her own, so much different than the gangs of her

She was twenty when her home grew again. She met a boy who needed her, even if he was unwilling to accept it. Andrew Minyard was lost and without a home and Renee was damned if she wasn’t going to give him one. Her family extended. Andrew was her other half. Her understood what she had been through and accepted he growth, even though he was not in a position to accept it. He welcomed her into his group, the first nonfamily member to have the privilege extended. Old Renee, old _Natalie_ , would have accepted his deal written in blood. She would have accepted his offer to go back with him to kill the men who had hurt her. But Renee smiled and thanked him, and decided to remain with her own group.  With the Foxes as divided as they were, they needed a protector for each

But her and Andrew, despite her refusal, stayed close. She was the only outsider he interacted with. He needed her, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He needed to heal, to grow as she did. So, she spoke in their common vernacular. She offered him her knives. They allowed her to heal. They were what he needed to survive. She taught him how to use them, how to fight better than his prison yard training had allowed him to. She, like Stephanie had done for her, had sown the seeds for his growth. It would take years and therapy and a fiery, blue eyed rabbit to help him finish that growth, and Renee supported him through every step of

Renee was twenty-one and home was a myriad of places. Stephanie’s house, the pews of a church, the sweaty mats where she sparred with Andrew, the couch of Fox Tower where she sat during movie nights, on the court, celebrating a win with her family.

 

 

playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/46bh21i6o5k8toxt7qhyb4esa/playlist/4SDOystxrkIdBPlAO2SrC9?si=_k4NZx0vTX-CrffO2vzIQw) 

thank you for reading come visit me on tumblr [here](https://allisonireynolds.tumblr.com/)


	3. Epilogue

Allison and Renee were both twenty-five when both of their homes changed again. They had both been through multitudes of different homes. Their backgrounds, starkly different, had caused their lives to converge and meet, a cosmic concoction for perfection, a denomination of the sublime.

Allison Reynolds was twenty-five and home had come full circle. Home was once again the Manhattan House. She had purchased it from her parents as soon a she was able. They had overcharged her and she knew. But she was never going to let them desecrate the first home she could remember.

But now the Manhattan House had evolved. Her six-year old brain may have ignored certain parts, but now, the house really was completely and wholly her _home_.

Allison realized this change one morning when she woke up, sunlight filtering through the light curtains that drifted in front of the bedroom window. She felt new. Something was different. She felt like a snake that had just shed its skin.

She got up and wandered aimlessly around. Suddenly, in her mind, she understood what it was that made her feel so refreshed. For the first time in her life, she had woken up in a home feeling like her life was completely hers. All at once, she felt a swell of emotion, rising from her chest to the top of her throat, and she had to cover her mouth to prevent the noise that was attempting to work it’s way out.

As she drifted, she began to notice things that made her feel the same emotion, again and again. She saw the chair with the jacket draped across, bright orange with REYNOLDS 7 emblazoned across the back. She drifted over to her desk where she flipped through the designs she was going to present the next day. She was successful. She was in the process of achieving something. She picked up the hairbrush, multicolored threads disrupting the blonde. She looked over at the woman still sleeping in her— _their_ bed.

Renee made her feel the most emotion of all. In all her life, Allison never expected to love someone as completely as she loved Renee. Allison never expected anyone to love her as much as Renee loved her. Allison never expected to feel worthy of someone like Renee’s love.

She didn’t get to see Renee too often. She was still working with the Peace Corps, but they were talking about a new plan. Renee coming to work in California as a social worker, moving in, maybe getting married. Allison could barely comprehend it. All the objects of her devotion contained into one house. It was almost too much.

She watched Renee slowly blink awake and tried to think of which path she had taken and which god she had earned the favor of to have deserved a home like this.

On the same hand, Renee had also never expected this life for her. She believed in a forgiving god. One that accepted her penance and had forgiven her for her crimes. But she still did not believe she should have been allowed the gifts she had been given. A life she adored, a woman she loved, a family she could turn to. She had a cause and a purpose and a reason. She woke up that same day Allison did feeling not rebirth, she had felt that a long time ago, but contentedness.

Renee Walker woke up that morning feeling whole and content and certain. Possibly for the first time in her life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading this! even though its really short i spent a lot of time on it and it's very dear to my heart. please leave comments below because they are my lifeblood and i love to hear feedback 
> 
> -xoxo mag

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this! if you have time, please feel free to give feedback in the comments, I love reading what everyone says :)


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